Abstract
Emergent studies of “prison tourism” are beginning to provide critical insight into a variety of problems formerly un- or under-developed in the scholarly paradigm of “dark tourism.” “Dark tourism” denotes the trend of packaging and consuming sites of, and associated with, death or suffering as tourist experiences (Strange and Kempa 2003: 387; Sharpley 2009: 10; Miles 2002: 1175). Dark tourist destinations are broad in scope and include sites of natural and human-made disasters alike (Sharpley and Stone 2009; Lennon and Foley 2010).1 The breadth of the dark tourism paradigm has been subject to a number of objections, criticisms, and revisions. In accounting for the diverse, but usually consumer-driven, behaviors of tourists, scholars have placed dark tourism on a spectrum from “darkest” to “lightest” (Dalton 2015: 5; Sharpley and Stone 2009; Miles 2002: 1175). William F.S. Miles (2002: 1175) further suggests a distinction between “dark” and “darker” tourism in distinguishing “between sites associated with death, disaster, and depravity and sites of death, disaster and depravity.”
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
In differentiating “dark” from “darker” tourism, Miles (2002: 1176) introduces the further category of “darkest” tourism. If “dark tourism” “encompasses visits to commemorative sites associated with death and holocaust, and darker tourism constitutes travel to actual sites of barbarism and genocide, darkest tourism would transcend both the spatial differences that distinguish dark from darker type and the time gap that separates both dark and darker from the remembered tragedy” (Miles 2002: 1176). For Miles (2002: 1176), “darkest tourism” would involve “real time” virtual tours of active sites of death and depravity. For an example of the darkest tourism, see Lutz Kaelber (2007: 24), who draws on the “darkest tourism” framework in examining virtual tours of actual and recreated gas chambers of Auschwitz.
- 3.
This term comes from the work of Michel Foucault, who conceives a complex entanglement of knowledge and power. For Foucault, power is ultimately a constructive rather than a prohibiting force—power “traverses and produces things, it produces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse. It needs to be considered as a productive network which runs through the whole social body, much more than as a negative instance whose function is repression” (Foucault 2002: 60).
- 4.
Dr. Piotr M.A. Cywiński, the director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and Memorial, exemplifies this point in describing Auschwitz as “the symbol of evil for the entire world, which is manifested by an over threefold increase in attendance, interest of the media, Internet statistics as well as over half a billion people throughout the planet who watched the 70th anniversary of the liberation of KL Auschwitz live on television” (Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum 2015a).
- 5.
Lennon and Foley (2010: 3) conceive pilgrimage as one of the earliest forms of tourism. Pilgrimage is often associated with violent and untimely deaths which take on religious or ideological significance to a certain groups of people (Lennon and Foley 2010: 3). In the context of Auschwitz, pilgrimage is amongst the various motivations that draw visitors to the camp.
- 6.
During its period of operation, Auschwitz formed a complex archipelago, consisting of three main camps—Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, and Auschwitz III-Monowitz—and a network of almost fifty sub-camps (Giaccaria and Minca 2011: 4).
- 7.
Zyklon B is the deadly chemical used to murder countless people in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and other extermination camps.
References
Ashworth, Gregory J. 2002. Holocaust Tourism: The Experience of Krakow-Kazimierz. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education 11/4: 363–367.
Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum. 2015a. Growing Attendance and Security at the Memorial. auschwitz.org/en/museum/news/growing-attendance-and-security-at-the-memorial,1147.html. Accessed 20 Nov 2015.
Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum. 2015b. One Million People Have Visited the Auschwitz Memorial in 2015. auschwitz.org/en/museum/news/1-million-people-have-visited-the-auschwitz-memorial-in-2015. Accessed 20 Nov 2015.
Beech, John. 2009. Genocide Tourism. In The Darker Side of Travel: The Theory and Practice of Dark Tourism, eds. Richard Sharpley and Philip R. Stone. Bristol: Channel View Publications.
Brown, Michelle. 2009. The Culture of Punishment: Prison, Society, and the Spectacle. New York: New York University Press.
Brown, Michelle. 2014. Visual Criminology and Carceral Studies: Counter-Images in the Carceral Age. Theoretical Criminology 18/2: 176–197.
Carrabine, Eamonn. 2012. Just Images: Aesthetics, Ethics and Visual Criminology. British Journal of Criminology 52/3: 463–489.
Carrabine, Eamonn. 2014. Seeing Things: Violence, Voyeurism and the Camera. Theoretical Criminology 18/2: 134–158.
Cole, Tim. 2000. Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler: How History Is Bought, Packaged, and Sold. New York: Routledge.
Crawshaw, Carol, and John Urry. 1997. Tourism and the Photographic Eye. In Touring Cultures: Transformations of Travel and Theory, eds. Chris Rojek and John Urry. London: Routledge.
Dalton, Derek. 2009. Encountering Auschwitz: A Personal Rumination on the Possibilities and Limitations of Witnessing/Remembering Trauma in Memorial Space. Law Text Culture 13: 187–225.
Dalton, Derek. 2015. Dark Tourism and Crime. London: Routledge.
Ferrell, Jeff. 1999. Cultural Criminology. Annual Review of Sociology 25: 395–418.
Ferrell, Jeff, Keith Hayward, Wayne Morrison, and Mike Presdee (eds.). 2004. Cultural Criminology Unleashed. London: Glasshouse.
Foucault, Michel. 2002. Truth and Power. In Michel Foucault: Power: Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984, eds. James D. Faubion (Vol. 1). New York: Penguin.
Franklin, Adrian. 2003. The Tourist Syndrome: An Interview with Zygmunt Bauman. Tourist Studies 3/2: 205–217.
Giaccaria, Paolo, and Claudio Minca. 2011. Topographies/Topologies of the Camp: Auschwitz as a Spatial Threshold. Political Geography 30: 3–12.
Hodgkinson, Sarah. 2013. The Concentration Camp as a Site of “Dark Tourism.” Témoigner: L’Entre Histoire et Mémoire 116: 22–32.
Kaelber, Lutz. 2007. A Memorial as Virtual Traumascape: Darkest Tourism in 3D and Cyber-Space to the Gas Chambers of Auschwitz. e-Review of Tourism Research 5/2: 24–33.
Keil, Chris. 2005. Sightseeing in the Mansions of the Dead. Social and Cultural Geography 6/4: 479–494.
Lennon, John, and Malcolm Foley. 2010. Dark Tourism: The Attraction of Death and Disaster. London: Cengage Learning.
Miles, William F.S. 2002. Auschwitz: Museum Interpretation and Darker Tourism. Annals of Tourism Research 29/4: 1175–1178.
Piché, Justin, and Kevin Walby. 2010. Problematizing Carceral Tours. British Journal of Criminology 50/3: 570–581.
Presdee, Mike, and Keith J. Hayward. 2010. Framing Crime: Cultural Criminology and the Image. London: Routledge.
Rojek, Chris. 1997. Indexing, Dragging and Social Construction. In Touring Cultures: Transformations of Travel and Theory, eds. Chris Rojek and John Urry. London: Routledge.
Schept, Judah. 2014. (Un)seeing Like a Prison: Counter-visual Ethnography of the Carceral State. Theoretical Criminology 18/2: 198–223.
Sharpley, Richard. 2009. Shedding Light on Dark Tourism: An Introduction. In The Darker Side of Travel: The Theory and Practice of Dark Tourism, eds. Richard Sharpley and Philip R. Stone. Bristol: Channel View Publications.
Sharpley, Richard, and Philip R. Stone (eds.). 2009. The Darker Side of Travel: The Theory and Practice of Dark Tourism. Bristol: Channel View Publications.
Sontag, Susan. 1977. On Photography. London: Penguin Books.
Spielberg, Steven (Director/Producer). 1993. Schindler’s List. Universal City: MCA Universal Home Video.
Staines, Deborah. 2001. Museum Auschwitz. Space and Culture: Archival Spaces 1/10: 63–90.
Staines, Deborah. 2002. Auschwitz and the Camera. Morality 7/1: 13–32.
Strange, Carolyn, and Michael Kempa. 2003. Shades of Dark Tourism: Alcatraz and Robben Island. Annals of Tourism Research 30/2: 386–405.
Urry, John, and Jonas Larsen. 2011. The Tourist Gaze 3.0. London: Sage.
Walby, Kevin, and Justin Piché. 2011. The Polysemy of Punishment: Dark Tourism and Ontario’s Penal History Museums. Punishment & Society 13/4: 451–472.
Welch, Michael. 2015. Escape to Prison: Penal Tourism and the Pull of Punishment. California: University of California Press.
Wilson, Jacqueline Z. 2003. Relics of a Desperate Act: Escape and Containment in J Ward. History Australia 1/1: 41–57.
Wilson, Jacqueline Z. 2005. Representing Pentridge: The Loss of Narrative Diversity in the Populist Interpretation of a Former Total Institution. Australian Historical Studies 36/125: 113–133.
Wilson, Jacqueline Z. 2008. Prison: Cultural Memory and Dark Tourism. New York: Peter Lang.
Young, James E. 1993. The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Young, Alison. 2014. From Object to Encounter: Aesthetic Politics and Visual Criminology. Theoretical Criminology 18/2: 159–175.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Pedersen, C. (2017). Screening Tourist Encounters: Penal Spectatorship and the Visual Cultures of Auschwitz. In: Wilson, J., Hodgkinson, S., Piché, J., Walby, K. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Tourism. Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56135-0_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56135-0_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-56134-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-56135-0
eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)